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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25579387">it gets alright to dream at night</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/carry_on_my_wayward_outcasts/pseuds/It-is-the-Hannah'>It-is-the-Hannah (carry_on_my_wayward_outcasts)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Plans For The Future, Post-Apocalypse, Self-Indulgent, as in this is set after they have successfully ended the apocalypse and are just living their lives, martin has a shitty job and jon encourages him to quit and that's it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:35:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25579387</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/carry_on_my_wayward_outcasts/pseuds/It-is-the-Hannah</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"We saved the world, I think you deserve to look for something that makes you happy."</p><p> </p><p>This is fully just 1700 words of meandering fluff and Martin realizing he can have little a ambition, as a treat</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>113</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>it gets alright to dream at night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Lmao so this fic started out as me daydreaming about quitting my shitty coffee shop gig and projecting onto Martin but! I put my resignation in today because I got offered a really good job that's actually relevant to what I'm studying!<br/>So I wrote this version as a continuation of my projecting onto Martin, but this time we get good things!</p><p>(Also side note-- I am not shitting on service jobs in general! They are very necessary and should be paid better! I think people who work them without going absolutely insane are SAINTS, I just personally hate my own minimum wage gig and wanted to vent a lil)</p><p>Anyway-- Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Martin’s current favorite fantasy was about his manager.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the store was slow, and his feet were aching, and he had too many hours left on shift to even think about, he let his mind drift to that one glorious dream. The details were always different, but the core of it was the same-- he would walk down the hall to the rarely occupied back office, open the heavy wooden door, and when the man inside looked up from his paperwork, Martin would say those beautiful little words he had been desperate to voice for so long-- </span>
  <em>
    <span>I quit. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t exactly do such a thing in real life, of course, but it was a nice thought. Considering how even the thought of handing in his resignation at the Institute had always made him physically ill, the simple solace of being able to picture quitting on the spot was enough of a novelty that it had gotten him through many a miserable workday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Martin! You’ve a customer up front!”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that there was often time for daydreaming. At his coworker’s shout from over by the drive-thru window, Martin put down the rag he had been absentmindedly cleaning the counter with-- sometimes it felt like there would be spills and coffee grounds everywhere no matter how many times he wiped down the metal-- and went to go take the order.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next several hours had a steady flow of customers, and Martin drifted into the routine of it all-- counting out change, making drinks, cleaning up where the cream dispenser always dripped, </span>
  <em>
    <span>re</span>
  </em>
  <span>-making drinks when people inevitably found reasons to complain, rinse, repeat until Jon’s arrival heralded the end of his shift. Martin didn’t notice him come in at first, so much on autopilot that he was poised and ready to take his order at the counter before realizing who was standing there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jon! Is it noon already?” Jon was smiling, as he often was when coming to pick Martin up, and the sight of him brightened Martin’s mood instantly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ten past, actually, I ran into one of the other teachers at the shops and got pulled into a conversation.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wasn’t the maths one that you hate, was it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it was Janice, she does english for the year nines and was asking after one of her old students.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin didn’t remember ever hearing the name, but Jon didn’t seem bothered by the encounter, so she must have been someone that he got along with. “That’s nice, then.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was, surprisingly. Are you ready to go?”</span>
</p><p> <span>Martin glanced around Jon’s shoulder, saw the shop was empty, and turned to shout to his shift leader-- “Alex, am I good to leave?”</span></p><p>
  <span>“Actually--” They started, but upon seeing Jon standing there they immediately shut up and nodded. “Yeah, you’re fine, see you Monday.” Martin wanted to laugh, but managed to hold it in while sliding off his apron and visor and hurrying out back to fetch his bag.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first few weeks he had worked at the coffee shop, he had almost always been roped into staying at least half an hour past when his shift was supposed to end, getting called after to do </span>
  <em>
    <span>just one more thing! </span>
  </em>
  <span>before leaving, but Jon had put a stop to this fairly quickly. The first time he had shown up to walk Martin home at the end of his shift and his coworker had tried to get him to stay longer, Jon had stared the poor man down so hard that news of it made it to the rest of the staff as well, and Martin was never forced to stay late again. Jon kept picking him up when the timing worked out anyway, and Martin privately thought it was hilarious seeing the reactions he managed to get even when as far as anyone else was concerned he was nothing more than an average year 11 english teacher. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon didn’t take his hand as they were leaving the shop, ever invested in “maintaining an air of professionalism” no matter how many times Martin told him that didn’t mean anything in a customer service job, but he did take Martin’s bag from him, shouldering it without so much as asking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How was work?” Martin shrugged. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quiet, mostly. Had a few good dogs come through the drive thru, but other than that it was pretty boring.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose that’s-- nice.” Martin snorted at Jon’s tone. The man always tried his very best to be supportive, but had no more love for Martin’s job than Martin himself did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you like that sort of thing. Personally, I’ve been starting to wonder if service jobs fall under the Vast territory?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon tilted his head quizzically in a way that reminded Martin a bit of one of the puppies in the window of the pet store they were currently walking past. “How so?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The deep fear of insignificance in the face of capitalism.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well if it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>capitalism </span>
  </em>
  <span>we’re talking about you could probably make a case for any of the fourteen.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin huffed a laugh, “You’re not wrong there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They continued walking for a while, listening to the passing cars and chatter of people around them. Martin took Jon’s hand at some point, and Jon allowed it, adjusting the bag and lacing their fingers together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Martin?”’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mm?” he glanced over to see Jon’s brow furrowed in the way it got when he was concerned about something, “What’s up?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think if you’re wondering which of the Fears your job lines up with I think it might be time for a career change.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin thought so too, honestly. He had really only taken this job because they had needed money, and between his only actual experience being at the Institute and his reluctance to take any job even remotely similar to that again his options had been a bit limited at the time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m open to suggestions, if you have them, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, you can do whatever you want, really. Now that I’m officially full-time we’ll be alright if you want to just look around for a bit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin was silent for a moment. It was true that Jon’s job paid surprisingly well for a teaching position, working at an expensive secondary school as he was, and his salary </span>
  <em>
    <span>would </span>
  </em>
  <span>be enough to support them decently for a while if Martin wasn’t working himself, but. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think I could let you just take all the burden on yourself like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was the heart of it, he thought. He had spent too many years as the sole breadwinner to ever have an easy time letting someone else take that stress on themselves. Obviously the situations were different, and Jon was a grown adult who had proven he could shoulder far more than teenage Martin had ever had to, but it still worried him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon squeezed his hand, and when Martin looked over, he was smiling softly at him. “Taking care of you is never a burden.” Martin bumped their shoulders together, returning the smile. Jon had said as much to him a thousand times by now, and Martin had said the same to him, but he still never got used to the idea that someone so unflinchingly had his back. “But if you’re worried about it, you could always just walk dogs or house sit for a while until you find something properly permanent.” Martin could see the appeal in that, actually. He had wanted something a little more stable when they were first starting out After, but now they were more established with their own flat and Jon’s job bringing in a steady paycheck. He didn’t think he could ever just </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>work, but he could do part time while he found something else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jon could clearly tell he was considering it, and gently prodded, “We saved the world, I think you deserve to look for something that makes you happy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You make me happy.” The response was automatic, one of the truest things he knew these days and an easy way to make his partner blush all in one. Other than Jon, though-- well, he hadn’t really had the time to think about what would make him happy, at least not career-wise. There was the one thing he had been thinking about even before he started working down in the Archives, a daydream that had always been even more impossible than the ones about quitting his job, but that might actually not be all that unreasonable, now. “D’you think I could go back to school?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you want to?” Jon made it sound like that was the only thing that mattered, and maybe it was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think-- yeah. I always liked school, you know? Had dreams of actually getting my degree pretty much ever since I dropped out of secondary.” Not that he’d ever seriously considered it before, but he and Jon had been talking a lot lately about making the most of their new second chance, in the world after the apocalypse, and this seemed to fall under that category.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you want to do it, you should go.” Like it was that simple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then again, maybe it was. It couldn’t hurt to let himself dream a little bigger. There would be all kinds of logistics involved, applications and financials to sort out, but the idea of it was slowly settling in the base of his chest, an actual goal to work towards instead of his current monotonous occupation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I think I’ll try for it.” Jon squeezed his hand again, supportive and strong beside him, and then, after a beat--</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Are you going to major in parapsychology?” He was obviously taking the piss, and Martin laughed and elbowed him, a fruitless endeavor considering their joined hands just meant he got pulled sideways as well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, shut up.” Jon laughed as well, a bright, rich sound that perfectly matched the sunny day around them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Martin hadn’t yet developed the daydream enough to know what he wanted to study, but the thrill of possibility excited him. He had spent so long with so few real positive prospects to look forward to-- jumping from minimum wage jobs to working at the Institute, to trying to survive the apocalypse, to picking up the first few basic pieces in the aftermath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would be nice to have something new to dream about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he was starting to come around to the idea that he could actually make some of his dreams come true. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope you liked it!<br/>Leave kudos/comments/hit me up on tumblr @it-is-the-hannah to talk about TMA or anything else!<br/>Hope you're having a lovely day, and remember to stay hydrated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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